Affect

Look up affect in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

When used as a descriptor or adjective, affect means a change, and usually refers to an emotion or symptom. Affected, when used in a description, refers to fake or intentionally assumed behaviour (a changed behaviour), i.e., an affected accent.

In general, to affect refers to the consequences of a change or the influence a change has on something else. In this sense, it is often confused with to effect, which generally means to cause a change. When used as verbs, effect refers to the cause of a change ("the governor effected a change in policy"), and affect refers to the consequences of that change ("the new policy really affected our family"). An affect also refers to that change ("her affected accent really had an effect on me"; "her affected accent really affected my view of her").

Affect may refer to:

Affect (philosophy)
Affect (psychology)
- Blunted affect or affective flattening, a reduction in emotional reactivity.
- Labile affect, the unstable display of emotion.
- Affect display, signs of emotion, such as facial expression, vocalization, and posture
- Affective science, the scientific study of emotion
Affect (linguistics), the grammar of expressing affect
Affective computing, an area of research in computer science aiming to simulate emotional processes.
Affekt, a German term often used in musical and other aesthetic theory
- Doctrine of the affections, an important theory in the aesthetics of music

Affect

See also